I would be grateful for some advice on a couple of issues regarding the
protection of original compositions. However, none of the songs are my own ...... I will
explain.

I volunteer at a UK youth project and part of the work that we do is
to engage young people in various music making activities of which one is song
composition. This has proved more popular than envisaged and we now have several
composers/vocalists/bands that are creating their own music to a good standard. The young
people are typically between 13 & 18 and have had little or no previous experience
with creating/performing music. Some of the songs are very good and I am conscious that we
need to be advising these young people how to copyright their compositions.

I
looked on the Internet and found an enormous amount of confusing information and
international legal jargon. It seems the old post it off in a letter to yourself (Rikki
Don't Lose That Number ) advice is
nonsense but that is what I remember my friends doing many years ago. Cheap and cheerful
but apparently does not stand up to much legal scrutiny.

Some of these songs
are rather quite good and I don't want the kids to be taken advantage of.

Is
there a good Internet site that I can point them to , or any reference guide that I can
print out for their parents regarding this? We will , of course, help them to fill out
any forms that are required.

The second point is that as the songs are now
getting very good, the next stage will be to record them. The kids themselves will perform
these and it will be a great experience for them to visit a studio and see how the
recording process works. The kids will get a copy of their recorded track and a
compilation CD will be compiled by the project. I realise that once these songs are out
into the Public Domain they could be on the other side of the world in seconds. Is there
anything else that I should think about regards the song writers rights before starting
work on the recording sessions? I assume that will need all songs to be copyrighted before
the studio dates.

This work is proving successful in getting kids off the
streets and into music. It has turned quite a few young lives around. It is important that
we get this right, offer safe/sound advise as we hope to turn this into regular workshops
that help to bring new talent through.

1. Copyright exists at all stages of the creative process. The moment you have thought
of a tune, you have copyrighted it. That of course, will not stand up very well in a
court in any jurisdiction, but there is no one magic moment in which a copyright is
created.

2. The letter with CD to self thing has never (to my knowledge)
been made to stand up in a court, because the other side could then produce a similar
letter and there is no way to date a CDR (other than the manufacturer's batch
manufacturing date).

3. The only kosher registration I can think of is the
Library of Congress registration service, but to do that, you will need an agent in the
US. Before anyone can litigate over copyright in the US, this registration must be
completed.

4. The best way to nail copyright to the masthead in the UK is to
publish the music and register that publication (i.e. replicated CD or DVD) with MCPS (and
similar bodies in other countries).

5. (And most important!) Beware
becoming bald men fighting over a comb! I get inquiries on a fairly regular basis from
artists who are fighting over who owns what in a song and/or recording. 99.9% of the
time, the songs are not worth a bucket of warm spit.

Good luck. It all
sounds very worthy, but beware creating unrealistic expectations of careers and fame and
fortune. Young kids soon get away with themselves and create crazy dreams that can do
more damage than good.

Both are increasingly interested in
this kind of 'outreach' work and they have lots of good info about all this sort of stuff,
and if you are a sufficiently worthy project they might even be tempted to come and give a
presentation ?

Red , I know
what you mean about raising expectations. Young people can be over enthusiastic which
leads to unreal expectations. Shows like X Factor don't help either!!

I think
that I am a good role model for them as I have been a musician for over 40 years and never
had a jot of fame. I was good enough to make regular money, but nothing special and have
always loved playing live music. Now that I have stopped gigging, I am loving getting
involved in helping these kids onto the first rung of the ladder. Good quality help and
advice was never available to me back in the day. Many years were spent "finding" the
pitfalls - although the school of hard knocks is a good teacher.

IMHO we have
lots of "bucket of spit" songs here but we also have on or two real gems including a 14
year old girl who's written 8 songs - all good - and has no idea how to go about things.
Just raw talent really. I don't want her to get shafted because we didn't support her. For
various reasons a lot of these young people do not have any parents around to help either.
This project has opened my eyes to a lot of societies problems , but lets not got into
that one!!

Many thanks again, and you may see a couple more posts from me as
the project moves along as I seem to have been left to manage this by myself.

I believe it would, but I would not take my word for it, as I am not by any stretch of the
imagination, an expert on copyright!

You must ask yourself (in any instance
of creating or establishing evidence that might have to be able to stand up to scrutiny in
litigation) will a judge in his chambers or in the court itself, be able to establish the
veracity of the evidence presented quickly and easily?

The other aspect of
the reality of copyright, is the appearance of evidence. Just how 'imposing' is the
evidence? The more concrete the evidence appears, the less likely it is that someone will
disregard it and injure your copyright. A book, CD, DVD, whatever that has been published
and is available on Amazon, eBay and elsewhere is a clear and very concrete object and the
presence of these objects and the dates of publication are very very clearly defined.

Like all property, including your garden or your car, there should be no doubt to
any person just what is and is not yours.

Online pirates will steal your music
regardless (unless it's too obscure to be worth bothering with). There's nothing you can
do about that.

But apart from that, what's the worry? That some established act
will steal your songs? There are literally millions of songs floating around on the
internet. Even if someone is going to rip off some songs, why would it be yours out of
those millions?

And is your life and music so solitary and obscure that you
have no way of proving you wrote some songs other than sending an envelope to yourself in
the mail?

I tend to agree that this is something people worry about too much. The chances of someone
ripping off your song and having a big hit with it are very small. And even if it
happened, and you had evidence, would you have the resources to pursue it in court?

There are certainly unscrupulous people in the music business, but if someone
likes your material that much, they would have far more to gain by working with you than
by stealing.

Quote Sam Inglis:I tend to agree
that this is something people worry about too much. The chances of someone ripping off
your song and having a big hit with it are very small. And even if it happened, and you
had evidence, would you have the resources to pursue it in court?

There are
certainly unscrupulous people in the music business, but if someone likes your material
that much, they would have far more to gain by working with you than by stealing.

Years ago it was explained to me
that if my music was good enough to steal, the thief would be far more likely to do it
'legally' via an unfair and unreasonable contract, not least because they would want to
hang on to the income from any successful exploitation. And also because, whilst lots and
lots of us can put a track together, the number who can make a good solid radio-friendly
hook is alot less !

If you really think this is worth worrying about, take the works to a lawyer -- they can
do the necessary legal work at this time to make sure you can be protected in court in the
event of any court case in the future.

If you say that you can't afford to do
this, then you can't afford a court case should it come to that. So stop worrying.

Quote Sam Inglis:I tend to
agree that this is something people worry about too much. The chances of someone ripping
off your song and having a big hit with it are very small. And even if it happened, and
you had evidence, would you have the resources to pursue it in court?

There are
certainly unscrupulous people in the music business, but if someone likes your material
that much, they would have far more to gain by working with you than by stealing.

Years ago it was explained to me
that if my music was good enough to steal, the thief would be far more likely to do it
'legally' via an unfair and unreasonable contract, not least because they would want to
hang on to the income from any successful exploitation. And also because, whilst lots and
lots of us can put a track together, the number who can make a good solid radio-friendly
hook is alot less !

...I thought you were going to say the number of people who have access to the necessary
budget to promote a good song, exploit it, and make a good profit from it, are a wealthy
influential few, and they would simply approach you and ask to use it and give you a cut,
rather than steal it. The famous cases of artists being ripped off and not receiving
writing royalties are usually from the days of unfair contracts back in the 50s/60s/70s.

It’s important to take some basic steps to protect your work. By taking this action if
any issue arises in the future about the copyright in the work you will be protected.Go to this link COPYRIGHT for the basics plus a video with Shawn Murphy of ASCAP (The
American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers) who gives you some insight into the
upside and downside of song registration. I think you will agree it does matter!! Heres to your successkevin